This application relates to communication and in particular relates to integration of existing communication formats in a manner that provides additional functionality to a user.
Various communication formats are commonly used for electronic communication. In particular, email and instant messenger formats are commonly used for communication through a personal computer (PC) or other device. Telephone communication is generally performed using a dedicated telephone device (desktop telephone, cell phone, or other device). In some cases Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) may allow telephone communication using a PC or similar device. VoIP may also use dedicated hardware such as a desktop IP phone or cell phone. Generally, some additional hardware is needed to use a PC in this way (e.g. an IP handset). Email, instant messenger and telephone communication, where they are provided on a single PC, are often provided by different applications. Such applications use different address books and maintain different communication logs. Thus, when communication between two or more people takes place using different communication formats, responding may require consulting the right address book and sometimes copying and pasting an address to another application, or even manually entering address information. When reviewing past correspondence, two or more different logs may need to be reviewed in order to see the full details of correspondence. Such logs may be reviewed entry-by-entry to determine the order in which individual communications occurred (e.g. from time stamp information). Separate communication formats generally require separate configuration. For example, a user may have an email account set up on an email server and separately have a telephone account set up on a telephone server. Thus, providing and maintaining multiple communications systems is inefficient and often inconvenient.